The Palmerston North Herald has issued a formal request asking university students to stop explaining why everyone should vote for the Green Party, particularly when nobody asked, the conversation was originally about parking, and the nearest election is still several months away.
The request follows a dramatic increase in unsolicited political recommendations across university campuses, flat meetings and group chats, where students have reportedly begun treating support for the Greens as a compulsory component of tertiary education alongside course readings, student debt and pretending to understand the assignment brief.
“We appreciate your enthusiasm, but some of us were just trying to eat lunch,” one student said after being cornered near the Massey Wellington microwaves and given a 25-minute explanation of how capitalism was responsible for their leftover pasta heating unevenly.
Witnesses say the conversation began when somebody complained about the price of coffee. Within minutes, three Green Party policies had been quoted, a petition had been circulated and the café’s disposable lids had been placed under citizen’s arrest.
The Herald understands many university students first discover the Green Party during orientation week, usually somewhere between receiving their student ID and being handed a tote bag containing six flyers, a reusable straw and an invitation to a protest about something happening overseas.
From that moment, students are reportedly required to mention the Greens at least once during every tutorial, regardless of the subject being discussed.
“I’m studying animation,” one student said. “We were talking about character rigging, and somehow the conversation became a debate about wealth taxes. I still don’t know how to make the character’s elbows bend.”
Political experts have described the behaviour as “first-year certainty”, a condition in which a person attends two lectures, watches half a documentary and immediately becomes qualified to redesign New Zealand’s entire economic system.
Symptoms include carrying a metal drink bottle covered in stickers, using the phrase “late-stage capitalism” before 9am, and responding to any criticism of the Green Party by asking whether the other person has “actually read the policy”.
The condition is considered especially severe when the student begins referring to the party as “the only adults in Parliament”, despite having spent the previous evening attempting to cook instant noodles in an electric kettle.
The Palmerston North Herald would like to clarify that university students are free to vote for whichever party they choose. They are also free to place campaign stickers on their laptops, attend rallies and explain electoral reform to exhausted flatmates who made the mistake of asking what time it was.
However, the Herald is asking them to remember that not every conversation requires a party-political solution.
A broken washing machine does not need a climate action plan. A group assignment does not require co-governance. Your landlord refusing to fix the shower is not necessarily evidence of an international neoliberal conspiracy, although in that particular case further investigation may be warranted.
The Green Party has not responded to the Herald’s request, presumably because its members are currently participating in a six-hour internal meeting to decide whether responding would constitute engagement with corporate media.
Several students have rejected the criticism, arguing that the Greens are a serious political party with elected MPs, detailed policies and a substantial voter base.
This information has been acknowledged by the Herald and immediately disregarded because it weakens the joke.
At the time of publication, a student had begun writing a 14-post Instagram story explaining why this article was harmful, uninformed and probably funded by the fossil fuel industry.
The first slide simply read: “A THREAD.”